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RE: Please no UOM (was Re: maps)

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Please no UOM (was Re: maps)
• From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
• Date: Sun, 04 Aug 2002 18:13:57 -0400
• In-reply-to: <4F4182C71C1FDD4BA0937A7EB7B8B4C1020ED520@r...>

At 02:54 PM 8/4/2002 -0700, Joshua Allen wrote:
>(Not that anyone here is advocating this, but just in case...)
>
>Regular expressions that enforce syntactic patterns for particular units 
>of measure are fine, but I would strongly caution against trying to assign 
>schema constraints based on the actual values (other than range 
>constraints to specify valid values, which I would classify as regular 
>expressions anyway).  Even worse are co-occurence constraints on the 
>values, and worst of all are constraints that involve UOM translations.
>
>These types of constraints tend to fall into the realm of "business 
>rules", and in no way belong in a data schema language.  I am aware that 
>some people advocate this, but I think anyone who has experience with UOM 
>processing in systems like EAP, BOM, Financials, and so on will agree that 
>to do so is just begging for sorrow.  It's one of those "nice in theory, 
>if you don't know the theory very well" things.

Attempts to solve UOM (you do mean units of measure, I hope?) globally are 
likely a horrible mistake. (Think WXS date/time types.)  However, building 
systems which make it possible to solve UOM locally makes a lot more sense 
to me than "well, it's an int, but who the hell knows how many of what it 
represents?"

Local representation for local information makes a lot more sense to me 
than any effort to globalize the representation by converting everything to 
a common format.  People who insist on building centralized arbiters of 
information probably think differently, but since I find the centralized 
arbiter model repulsive in itself, I don't think it's particularly 
interesting.  (Nor do I care what SAP and Baan and PeopleSoft find convenient.)

Simon St.Laurent
"Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." - Emile Coue

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: Please no UOM (was Re: maps)
    • From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@n...>

• References:
  • RE: Please no UOM (was Re: maps)
    • From: "Joshua Allen" <joshuaa@m...>

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